Service Learning Log

1. Activism: This week I volunteered at The Women to Women Conference in Apopka. This was a conference for migrant farmworkers to teach them about their rights, healthcare, self-defence and various other topics. The women were broken up into workshops from about 10am-3pm. My task for the conference was to be in charge of childcare. There were about 20-25 kids there and we kept them busy with coloring activities, games, and a game of kickball or two. This week felt very successful because we actually got to work not directly with the women but we made sure the children were very well taken care of so that they could concentrate on their workshops. Next Sunday we are going to the community garden in Fellsmere and I am really looking forward to it.
2. Reflection: The activism I have done this week, relates to what we have read in class because this conference was all about bringing these women together to empower them and to show them that they have rights too. It is very difficult to be able to bring groups of these women together as we have read about in the women workers in Maquiladoras article and also in the migrant domestic farmworker article. They rarely have any time off and they may not have anyone to watch their children, the language barrier may also be an issue. That’s why this conference was so great because they provided these women with childcare, breakfast and lunch and taught them many valuable things. According to Sarah Swider in her article Working Women of the World Unite?, she says “the unorganizable provides a new model for organizing that offers both the labor and the women’s movements a practical strategy for overcoming difficulties they face in the globalizing world” (Ferree & Tripp, p.129). The women walked out of there not just with gift bags but with a better sense of self.
3. Reciprocity: Volunteering at this conference was an amazing experience for me. We got to meet and get to know some terrific children and their mothers. It was also nice being part of something that allowed these women to have a day to focus on themselves.
Works Cited:
Ferree, Myra Marx, and Aili Mari Tripp. Global Feminism Transnational Women's Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2006. Print.